Things will be changing around here soon. This blog will be redone in order to set up for a new venture I'm investigating. I'll be keeping some of the posts, but most of the old stuff will be gone from this site. It'll be a new site, with a new look and a new focus.
Why?
I've been building web sites for about ten years now and along the way I've figured out what works and what doesn't, as far as online marketing and community building goes. I'm a programmer by profession, but I've always been a jack of all trades online; server administration, web page design, information architecture, etc. If it involves web pages in any way, I've probably done it. I also know others in the same camp as me, looking to do great things with these skills. I could easily put together a web design shop if I wanted to. I have the skills, the knowledge and the connections to get in this game and make it happen. But there's always been one little problem.
Web Design Shops Suck (for Small Businesses)
It's not that web design shops aren't good at what they do, most do stunning work. But most can't do small business work. When starting out in web design, shops usually create sites for small businesses. The problem is that when they first start out, they don't know anything! They use these early sites to learn the ropes and as a testing ground for new technologies. Invariably, most of these sites end up useless. They're typically ugly or unusable and they don't take into account what the business really needs from a website. Instead, they put up a site that has no useful information on it, except what the business does and their phone number. I can find that in the phonebook. When a visitor sees this kind of site, they immediately label it as useless and move on. When a design shop starts to get good, they also start to charge more and move on to bigger and bigger companies. This isn't because they're greedy, but they're just trying to survive.
About 5 years ago, (has it been that long?) a friend and I were going to start a web shop and focus on small businesses. We had been at another web design firm for a number of years and were tired of building drab web sites for big corporate companies. We never really felt like we were truly helping people and we knew that if we could build these kind of sites for small businesses, it would significantly impact their business and their lives.
So we met with someone who wanted to invest in our business. We were thinking of investment money so that we could go full time from the start and get a nice office so people would take us seriously. The problem was that this investor wanted us to grow, 20% to 30% every year! For as long as we were in business! I understand now that that was pretty reasonable for an investor to want. Why invest in us at all unless we could make him 20% returns?
But that kind of growth would quickly price us out of the small business market. Within about two years we would have to go looking for bigger deals to keep us going, which would mean I wouldn't be able to do what I wanted to do in the first place.
I eventually flaked out and didn't go through with it, which was okay since my friend had gotten a job in Virgina soon after anyway. But that explained why most web design shops only catered to big companies, because they had to. And I learned a lesson, if you're going to start a web company focused on small business, don't take investment money.
So now my plan is to start small. I'll continue to work full time in another job and work with the small businesses during weekends/evenings. I think most small businesses will know where I'm coming from with this and will be understanding of that kind of work arrangement.
It's Not About "Design", It's About Community
A mistake most web designers, and their customers, make is in thinking that a company web site is somehow about looking good. They focus all of their energy in building a pretty or flashy or striking web site. None of that matters. And even if it did, the small business can't compete here against big corporations with bigger bucks. It's like David thinking he's going to go smash Goliath's face in with his fists. He doesn't have a chance.
But where small businesses can compete is in showing people your company has a human side. Corporations can't compete with that, no matter how flashy their design or complicated their technology. A corporation with 2,000 employees and a legal department can't be genuine, no matter how good they fake it. It's fundamentally impossible, and that's where a small business can grab it's advantage.
And that's what I want to do, empower small business owners so they can grab that advantage at a price that they can afford. I'll explain how I plan to do that a little later.
